Stonemouth

by Iain Banks

I smile at Ezzie. ‘Fair enough,’ I tell him. I push the pile of money towards him and sit back.

  ‘How about you? Do you see Ellie often?’ I ask Ryan MacAvett.

  Ryan shakes his head. ‘No, hardly ever,’ he says. ‘Seen her once or twice through the window of that drop-in centre on the High Street. Used to bump into her at the supermarket, but now she gets stuff delivered.’ He glances at me. ‘Thought of claiming I had a problem, you know? Like, being an addict? Just to be able to walk into the centre and get a chance to talk to her.’

  ‘Doubt that would have worked,’ I tell him.

  ‘Aye, me too,’ Ryan says, and drinks from his bottle of Bud.

  The girl is a hard habit to give up, I think but don’t say.

  We’re sitting sprawled on couches in another part of the loft while we take turns, two at a time, on a beta for the PS3 of MuddyFunster II, due to be the blockbuster Christmas release from the games house Ferg works for. It’s Grand Theft Auto with more ridiculous weapons and more slappable civilians, basically, and Ferg is brutally dismissive of it, having had little to do with the development and nothing with the concept.

  ‘It disrespects women, for one thing,’ he tells Lee when he asks why Ferg hates it so much.

  ‘That bothers you?’ Jim asks, mildly incredulous.

  ‘Mark my words,’ Ferg says, drawing himself up and narrowing his eyes. ‘Manners change in societies over time, gentlemen, and, as usual, I am ahead of the curve. Gallantry will be making a comeback.’

  ‘Gallantry?’ Lee splutters.

  ‘Yes. Perhaps even a sense of fair play, who knows?’

  ‘Wouldn’t hold your breath,’ Jim tells him.

  ‘… Is that a submarine surfacing in the river there?’ Lee says.

  I stare over at him, but of course he’s talking about the game, not a stray Poseidon boat blundering into the Stoun like a confused techno-whale. An unfeasibly large sub is indeed surfacing in the Hudson, if that’s New York they’re playing in. Currently up are Lee and Jim, with Ferg standing looking over their shoulders. Bets have been placed on the outcome so there’s more than just pride and bragging rights at stake.

  ‘Don’t get me started on that fucking submarine!’ Ferg says vehemently.

  Lee snorts. ‘That’s just bullshit, man.’

  I’ve just had a shot on the new game and we all got to talking about how the violence in these games never quite measures up to the sort of messy horror real gangsters inflict on their victims. Turns out Dr Jim has heard a rumour.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Jim says. ‘If you’re ever close enough to Fraser Murston, take a look at the tips of his left index finger and thumb. Scar tissue.’

  ‘Sure he wasn’t just trying to sandpaper off his prints or something?’ Ferg asks.

  Jim shrugs. ‘Who’s sure about any of this stuff ? Just telling you what I heard.’

  ‘He took out this guy’s balls and his eyes and … swapped them?’ Lee says, crossing his legs and screwing his eyes up in something like sympathy.

  Jim nods. ‘And then superglued everything back up again. That’s how he got injured, pinching the guy’s scrotum closed with his fingers; left them in contact too long. Then he got it wrong trying to free himself and removed some of his own skin.’

  ‘That’d leave DNA evidence, would it no?’ Ezzie says.

  ‘Which is maybe why he used the welding torch on the guy as well,’ Jim agrees. ‘Anyway, this gangster from Govan might already have been dead from shock by then. Body’s under ten metres of backfilled rubble beneath the new spur on the bypass. So they say.’

  Lee shakes his head. ‘Still sounds like shit.’

  ‘Good rumour to have going round about you, though,’ Ryan says. ‘If you want to keep people scared of you.’

  ‘You ever see these scarred fingers?’ Lee asks Ryan.

  ‘No. Wasn’t looking for it, though. Didn’t hear about any of this till after Ellie and me split up.’

  ‘Stu?’ Ferg says. ‘You ever seen this digital scar tissue?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Heard that story?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Illuminating. Any further insights?’

  ‘El told me he did it taking a Pop-Tart out the toaster.’ Ferg looks relieved. ‘That’ll do. I prefer that explanation.’

  Later Ryan and I are sitting back on the couch together while the others play or observe MuddyFunster II in all its beta version glory.

  ‘Listen, Ryan,’ I say quietly, because I haven’t actually said this yet and I’m probably supposed to, whether I really feel it or not, and in the end he seems like a decent enough guy. ‘Ah … I’m sorry about you and Ellie. Sorry it didn’t work out.’

  Ryan shrugs, drinks, doesn’t look at me. ‘And I’m sorry about you and my sister,’ he says, turning and giving me an insincere smile.

  Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming. Bit of a low shot, even if I do deserve it.

  I breathe out in a sort of soundless whistle: all breath, no note.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, after a moment. ‘Saw Jel yesterday. For whatever it’s worth, Ryan, I think we’re okay. Jel and me.’

  ‘Yeah, good for you,’ Ryan says with a small sneer, sighing and studying the top of the Bud bottle. ‘But you really fucked up a lot of people, you two.’

  ‘Like I say, Ryan, I’m sorry.’

  Ryan shrugs. ‘Aye, well. If you see Ellie,’ he says, looking at me, ‘tell her I said hello.’

  ‘I don’t know that I will, though. Not to speak to.’

  He gives a small, bitten-off laugh. ‘Nah, she’ll see you.’ He drains the bottle. ‘She might be teasing you, or waiting for you to – I don’t know: make the effort or something, but she’ll want to see you. Never fucking stopped talking about you.’ He jumps up, waggles the bottle. ‘Drink?’

  I haven’t partaken yet, but it may be time. ‘Aye. Think I saw some Becks in the fridge. One of those.’

  ‘Bud no good enough for you, eh?’ Ryan says. Not too harshly, but still.

  ‘They make that shit from rice, man.’

  Ryan shrugs. ‘All gets you drunk, just the same,’ he says. ‘Whatever works.’ He heads for the fridge.

  True. And I’m happy enough to drink Kirin and other Japanese beers made from rice. So I’m a hypocrite and a beer snob. I look at Ryan as he opens the fridge door. And I’m guessing that you, young man, would always be too easily pleased to be good enough for Ellie.

  Shocked at my own ignobility – and alarming self-honesty – I’m especially nice to him when he hands me my beer and sits back down again.

  After turns wrecking large parts of Beijing, LA, Rio, London and Lagos – though we never do see that submarine again – Ryan and I are sitting pissed on the couch once more, agreeing that Ellie is a hell of a girl, and we’re both idiots to have let her slip through our fingers.

  ‘But you’re the bigger idiot,’ Ryan tells me, passing me a joint (one of Ferg’s; I can tell by the tightness, immaculate rolling technique and obsessive attention to detail). ‘I tried really hard to keep hold of her, Stu. You just threw her away.’

  I take a good deep toke, to avoid having to respond to this. I shake my head once instead, that sort of quick one-two that more acknowledges than denies. I let some smoke leak down my nostrils.

  ‘You just threw her away,’ Ryan repeats, wagging his finger at me, in case I didn’t hear him the first time. ‘That was…that was idiotic, Stewart,’ he tells me. He taps himself on the chest. ‘I just …I just …’ Ryan is sort of staring into the middle distance and can’t decide what he he just. ‘I just…wasn’t up to keeping her, I guess,’ he concludes, and sounds sad, as though this has just occurred to him and it’s a terrible truth. He coughs, pulls himself up straighter. ‘D’you know a thing I heard?’

  This sounds more promising. I’ve breathed out. The doobie has been handed on to a passing Ferg. ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Ellie had this thing, with this guy? Lecturer, at Aberdeen? Last year. W
ell, started year before that, ended last year. Or, like, maybe it ended earlier this year?’

  At least I’m not being bombarded with irrelevant detail here. Smothered with irrelevant vagueness, maybe. ‘Really?’ I say.

  ‘Anyway, went on for a couple of years. This guy was older? He was, like, thirty, maybe even more. Seemingly happily married. Two kids, as well. Devoted father and all that shit? Apparently the wife had no idea. Anyway, last…earlier this year, whenever, this guy suddenly leaves his wife and kids, just walks out one day and he’s on Ellie’s doorstep at this flat she has in Aberdeen, but – and this is the point, Stu; this is the point,’ he tells me, tapping an index finger against my chest. ‘Ellie wouldn’t even let him in. Told him to go back to his wife. The thing, the affair ended right there. He never even got to touch her again.’ Ryan’s eyes are wide at this.

  ‘Jeez,’ I say.

  Ryan nods enthusiastically. ‘He thought, this poor bastard thought he was making this enormous gesture, ultimate romantic … like, gesture? Walking out on his wife, his whole family, maybe throwing away his job, friends too and saying like, Hey, I’m yours, to Ellie; look what I’ve sacrificed for you!’ Ryan snaps his fingers in front of my eyes. ‘Cut him off dead. Just like that. Wasn’t what she wanted. Poor fuck had to check into a hotel. Wife started divorcing him but took him back eventually after … I don’t know; fuck knows how much begging. Even then only for the kids cos they missed him so much and it’s still separate rooms and he’s like, he’s fucked, man. I mean, not getting any, but he’s fucked, man, just fucked.’

  ‘Maybe he should have mentioned to Ellie about giving everything up for her, before he went ahead and did it.’

  ‘Fucking obviously he should have done that, man,’ Ryan says, waving his arms around, ‘but he thought he was being, like, romantic? Like it would be the best surprise ever? Fucking had that thrown back in his face, poor fuck.’ He pulls hard on his bottle of Bud.

  ‘Yeah, but you’re not blaming Ellie, are you?’ I ask. ‘It was the lecturer guy—’

  ‘No, but …’ Ryan shakes his head. ‘No. He was an idiot. Like you were an idiot.’ Ah, we’re back to that. Ryan jabs himself in the chest with his finger again. ‘Like I was an idiot to think I could keep her when all she wanted was …’ Ryan shakes his head, staring into the middle distance. ‘I don’t even know what she wanted,’ he says quietly. ‘To be married? Prove she could keep a guy, not have him …’ He slouches down, legs spread, head lowered as he inspects his beer bottle. ‘Be normal, or something,’ he says, voice close to a murmur, barely audible. Then he looks at me, suddenly looking lost and hopelessly vulnerable. ‘We were going to have a kid, did you know that?’ he asks me. Fuck, I think he’s going to start crying.

  ‘I heard,’ I tell him. ‘I’m really sorry about that. Seriously; don’t know how any part of that feels, but I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Neither of you did.’

  Jeez, I’m welling up myself here. Some of it will be inebriation-inspired, temporary-best-buddy-in-the-world syndrome, but not all of it. Of course I feel sorry for the poor bastard. When I heard Ellie had been pregnant and then lost the child, I don’t think I spared Ryan a second thought; whether you’re a man or a woman, straight or gay, your first feeling is for the woman. But just because it might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to her doesn’t mean it can’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, too.

  Who knows what might have been different for Ryan if the child had been born? He and Ellie might still be together, one happy family. He might still have her, have the sort of life I guess he wanted, or that Ellie wanted and he was happy, grateful to be part of. Who knows?

  ‘Wasn’t meant to be,’ Ryan mumbles.

  It sounds like a mantra, like something he’s learned to say, to convince himself or to reassure other people: oh, well, if it wasn’t meant to be, if the universe or God or something so decreed that it wasn’t part of the great officially approved master plan, that makes it all right somehow.

  This sounds like complete shit to me, but then I’m not in Ryan’s position – thank fuck – trying to reconcile whatever shambolic beliefs I might hold with a simple twist of fate, just one more random outcome spat forth by a universe breezily incapable of caring.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says quietly. ‘She’s not seeing anyone. Fairly sure of that.’ He sighs. ‘Not that you can ever be sure of anything with Ellie.’ He has another drink, glances at me. ‘But I mean if you want to see her, there’s nobody in the way.’

  I open my mouth to say, I’m still not sure she wants to see me, but Ryan concludes with, ‘Least of all me.’

  He taps me on the knee with his bottle of Bud as he gets up. He goes to where the others are tearing up Sydney on the big plasma screen and announces he’d better be going. Goodbyes are exchanged.

  I get a sort of half-wave, half-salute as he heads for the stairs.

  11

  When I leave, maybe half an hour later – it’s just gone four – the rain has stopped but the streets are still glistening under a hurried grey sky of small ragged clouds. I stick my earbuds in and put the iPhone’s tunes on shuffle. The earbuds are Ultimate Ears LEs: an Xmas present to myself last year. Expensive, but worth the improvement in sound, assuming you can afford to spend more on them than most people do on an MP3 player in the first place. The LEs are quite chunky. They’re sort of shiny blue, not white, and I use them with the grey, earplug-material, in-ear fixings. This provides really good sound insulation; you properly have to use your eyes when you cross a road.

  It also means when somebody comes up behind you, you get no audible warning at all and so they can grab your arm out of your jacket pocket, push it so far up your back you have to go up on tiptoes because otherwise it feels like the bone’s going to break, and the two of them can bundle you into the back of a suddenly appeared Transit van and get the doors closed again before you’ve even had time to cry out.

  Fuck, I think. This is really happening.

  I’m face down on a grubby floor, dimly lit, staring at white-painted metal ridges scuffed to thin rust. I’ve seen this before recently but I can’t think where immediately. The van’s moving, engine roaring at first then settling. At least they’ve let go of my arm. I push down, start to rise, and what feels like a pair of boots on my back forces me back down again. I lie on my front, breathing hard, terrified. Sobering up fast here. I look to the side, where I can see the legs that are attached to the boots resting on my back.

  ‘Just you stay where you are,’ a voice says.

  The boots come off my back and I can see the person who spoke. It’s Murdo Murston, on a bench seat along the side wall. He’s dressed in workman’s dungarees, sitting on a hi-vis jacket. I look round and Norrie is sitting on the bench on the other side, just taking off a hoodie. He’s wearing well-used dungarees too. Just the two Murstons in here. It’s one of the bigger Transits so there’s no way through to the cab, just a third wall of plywood. I’m guessing Fraser might be doing the driving. Given his reputation for unhinged violence, this may actually be a good sign.

  ‘Guys,’ I say, trying to sound reasonable. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Comfy there, Stewie?’ Murdo asks. Murdo hasn’t changed much; a little heavier maybe. Beard a bit thinner, darker, more sculpted and trimmed. Norrie now sports something between designer stubble and a thin beard; as he’s ginger it’s hard to gauge.

  ‘Aye, comfy?’ Norrie says, and I’m tapped hard on the side of my head with something solid. I look round again to see the business end of a baseball bat, just retreating. Norrie’s holding it one-handed, smiling.

  ‘Ouch?’ I say to him. I can still feel the place on the side of my head where he tapped me. On the other side, I can feel Murdo taking my phone out of my jacket pocket. Following the earbud wires. Well, that made that nice and easy. I turn my head again to look at Murdo, who’s detaching the earbud cables and inspecting the iPhone.

  Murdo looks at Norrie. �
�You know how you take the batteries out of these?’ he asks.

  ‘Naw.’

  The van’s swinging this way and that, not going especially fast. It stops, idling, every now and again before continuing. Just driving through the streets of the town, not doing anything further to attract any attention.

  ‘Guys, what’s going on?’ I ask. ‘I mean, for fuck’s sake! I saw Donald on Friday. I checked in with Powell first, on Friday, and I saw him again yesterday. They both said it was okay I stayed here till Tuesday morning so I can pay my respects to Joe.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Murdo says.

  ‘Aye, but ye didnae talk to us, did ye, Stewie?’ Norrie says. ‘Just cos Grandpa thought the sun shone oot yer arse, doesnae mean we all do.’ He looks over at Murdo. ‘Eh no?’

  ‘Ssh, Norrie,’ Murdo says. He reaches out one boot, taps me on the head. ‘You can sit up, Stewie. Slide back against that wall there.’ He nods.

  I do what he says so I’m sitting with my back to the plywood wall, dusting my hands down – they’re shaking – taking out the earbud that remains lodged in my left ear and putting both into the pocket they took my phone from.

  ‘Guys, come on,’ I say. ‘There shouldn’t be a problem here. I’m back to pay my respects to Joe, that’s all.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Murdo mutters. ‘This button on the top. Turns them right off.’ He keeps the button down, waits for the slide-to-power-off screen to appear, then powers down the phone. He sticks it in the front pocket of his dungarees. He looks at me.

  ‘What you saying?’

  ‘I just want to pay my respects to Joe, that’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m here to do. I’ll be gone by Tuesday.’ I look round the dim interior of the van. ‘What the fuck’s all this about?’

  Oh fuck, what are they going to do to me? Being in the back of a van with these guys, them turning the phone off. This doesn’t look good. But I talked to their dad! He said it was okay for me to be here, just for a few days. Fuck, is there some sort of power struggle going on? Are the brothers starting to get impatient, disobeying orders, making their own decisions? What have I landed myself in? And what fucker has spoken to the Murston boys, dropped me in it? Ezzie, probably, though you never know.